When Stynes reached the apartment complex, the first thing he saw was two uniformed cops leading a sweaty middle-aged man out of the manager’s office in handcuffs. The light was draining out of the day, but even in the glow from the parking lot lights, Stynes saw the man’s pasty skin, the clammy sheen of sweat across his forehead. They stuffed the guy into the back of a cruiser but left the door open when they saw Stynes approaching.
“This is our guy?” he asked the officers.
“Indeed,” one of them said. “Nicholas Reeves. Age thirty-eight. He says he’s managed this complex for the last three years.”
Stynes leaned into the car, positioning his face about a foot from Reeves. “So you like touching little girls, Nick?”
The man started crying right away. He squished his eyes shut and ducked his head and his body shook while he cried. Stynes noticed that Reeves’s lip looked a little puffy and red, the result of being kicked in the face by Ashleigh Manning. Stynes thought the girl was nuts for doing what she did, but he had to admire her cojones. And he kind of liked seeing a guy like Reeves take a good shot to the face.
“Do you think this is going to make me feel sorry for you, Nick?” Stynes asked. “This crying bullshit.”
The man still couldn’t bring himself to speak, but he managed to shake his head. In truth, Stynes did feel a little sorry for the guy. He might be a creep and a pervert, but he still possessed a vulnerable humanity that Stynes couldn’t ignore. And if he thought his life sucked while sitting handcuffed in the back of a small-town police cruiser, wait until he got a load of prison as a pasty, doughy child molester.
“She was only fifteen, you know that?” Stynes said. “Fifteen. My socks are older than that.”
“I’m sorry,” Reeves said.
“What’s that?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? Yes, you are. But sorry doesn’t feed the bulldog, does it?”
The man continued to weep, but his sobs were more quiet.
“Let me guess. I bet your apartment is full of porn and underwear you swiped from your tenants’ apartments when they weren’t home.”
“Don’t tell my mother,” Reeves said. “Can we just not tell my mother?”
“Does she read the newspaper? Because it will be in there under the heading ‘Felony Sexual Assault.’ ”
The man’s head jerked up. “Felony?”
“What do you think? You touch a little girl and we give you a break?”
“I just wanted to hug her,” he said. “Just…feel her.”
“You’re not supposed to do that with kids.”
“I don’t mean that way.” Reeves took a deep breath. He tried to suck some of the snot on his face back into his nose. “I mean I just wanted some companionship.”
“You should have got a cat.”
Stynes reached into his back pocket and brought out an old handkerchief he sometimes remembered to carry. He balled it up, taking great care to cover the skin of his own hand, and wiped Reeves’s nose back and forth, clearing most of the snot and tears. He tossed the handkerchief onto the ground.
“Thank you.”
“So, Nick, tell me about the guy who rented this apartment from you. You know, the apartment in which you sexually assaulted this girl today.”
Reeves took a long moment to answer. Stynes lifted his foot and gave Reeves a gentle kick in the leg.
“I’m waiting,” he said.
“Are you willing to work out a deal?” Reeves asked. “I tell you what you want to know, so you go easy on me?”
“You watch too much Law and Order, Nick. How about you tell me what I want to know, and then I won’t put you in a holding cell with a four-hundred-pound gay black man who likes pasty white guys? How’s that for a deal?”
Reeves nodded. He understood.
“He rented the place three months ago. A three-month lease.”
“Is that standard?”
“We offer it when we have a lot of vacancies. The rent is more per month, but you get the shorter lease.”
“Go on.”
“He showed up and paid the deposit-that was just ninety-nine dollars-and the first month’s rent. Then he didn’t pay again, so he was going to get evicted, except the lease was up anyway. And when I told him he was being evicted, he just took some of his stuff and left.”
“He pay with a check?”
“Cash.”
“His name?”
“Steven Kollman.”
“You ever talk to him or find anything else out about him?”
“Is he in trouble?” Reeves asked.
“Not as much as you. Yet.”
Reeves stared straight ahead. He seemed to be thinking something over. “I got kind of a weird vibe off the guy.”
Stynes looked at the two uniformed cops who were listening in. “He got a weird vibe off the guy.”
“Seriously,” Reeves said. “He said he used to live here, and he was back in town to reconnect with his roots. That’s what he said. We never talked after that until I evicted him.”
“How did he take the news of the eviction?” Stynes asked.
“Like it was nothing. Like I’d told him it might rain tomorrow. I don’t think he cared. He just left.”
“Did this Kollman guy have any visitors? Did you ever see him with anybody?”
“Besides the girl from today?”
“Yes, besides the girl you assaulted. Yes. Any other visitors or friends?”
“There was one guy.”
“Who was he?”
“Just some guy. He came by not long after Kollman moved in. I saw them talking outside the building one night. It looked like the other guy was kind of pissed at Kollman, but then they were okay, you know? The situation calmed down. And then just a few days ago, the guy came back one night. I saw him going into the building. I was cleaning up some trash out back, but it sounded like they were arguing a little. I mean, the voices were raised loud enough a couple of times that I could hear it outside.”
“What happened?”
“I was going to go up and knock on the door and ask them to keep it down. We try to run a tight ship here.”
“I can tell.”
“Thanks. But when I started over to the steps, the other guy was coming down and left the building. That was it.”
“What does this guy look like?”
“I didn’t see him up close. That night on the stairs, I only saw him from behind. I was in the basement and he went out on the first floor.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was kind of tall and thin. He was dressed okay. Not like Kollman, you know? He always looked a little ratty. But this guy looked decent. Kind of middle class, you know?”
“Did you see his car?”
“No.”
“And was that the only visitor for Kollman? No girls? Nothing?”
“Nothing else that I saw. I swear. He was quiet. He was a good tenant, except he didn’t pay.”
Stynes straightened up. “All right, Nick. Thanks.”
“What happens now?”
“A free tour of our justice system, courtesy of the taxpayers of Dove Point, Ohio.”
“Oh.” Reeves closed his eyes, and the tears started again. “Please?”
“Get ahold of yourself.”
Stynes closed the door and turned to the two officers. They walked a few feet away.
“What’s his deal?” Stynes asked.
“He’s clean,” the one said. “Not even a moving violation.”
“Really?”
“And we didn’t find anything weird in his room. A little porn, but no kiddie stuff. No weapons or anything like that.”
Stynes nodded. “He’s all yours.”
“What do you think they’ll do with him, Detective?”
“The prosecutor’s office can sort it out, but I think he’s looking at lewd conduct with a child. They’ll threaten him with a felony, but he might get off with just a misdemeanor. And do me a favor? When you get him to the jail, let him wipe his face off.”
Stynes saw more uniformed officers a couple of buildings away. He walked down there and met a crime scene technician on her way out of the building.
“What’s it look like?” Stynes asked.
The tech looked to be about twenty-five. Like the rookie cops, they grew younger and younger all the time. Sometimes Stynes felt as if the rest of the world were a film being shown in reverse, and everyone grew younger while he aged.
“Not much,” the tech said. She wore a Dove Point PD polo shirt. “Your friend over there pretty well cleaned the place out. We’ve got a notice to hold the Dumpster. We can check it tomorrow in the daylight.”
“Prints?”
“A mess of them,” she said. “It’s a furnished apartment and not a particularly nice one. Every tenant for the last twenty years has touched every surface in there. We got some good ones, but there’s no way to know if they’re from your guy or not.”
“And that’s it?”
“Pretty much,” she said. “What did this guy do?”
Stynes looked up at the window of the apartment. “Right now, I’m not sure.”
The tech shrugged.
Stynes asked, “Is it clear up there? I can go in?”
“It’s all yours.”
Stynes went up the stairs, trying to ignore the smells in the hallway, the cooking smells and body odor and dirty diapers. The door to the apartment stood open, and Stynes went in. Most everything had been cleared away. He wouldn’t say the place had been cleaned, but there was no clutter or garbage present. If not for his arrest, Nick Reeves would be getting ready to rent this palace to the next lucky contestant. His arrest would likely cost Reeves his job.
Stynes looked around the place-kitchen, bathroom, small bedroom. He was on his way back to the living room when his cell phone rang. It was Dispatch.
“Detective Stynes? We found that detective in Columbus, the one you were asking about.”
“Great,” Stynes said. “Let me get a pen.”
“He’s on the line right now, Detective. I can put the call through to your phone.”
“Really?”
“Really. Stand by.”
The wonders of modern technology.
Stynes waited, listening to a couple of clicks. The dispatcher told him to go ahead. “You’re speaking with Detective Helton of Columbus PD.”
“Detective Stynes?” a surprisingly young voice said.
“That’s me. Thanks for taking the call.”
“No problem. We’re always happy to help out our brothers in the rural provinces.”
Shithead, Stynes thought.
“You’re wanting to know about an assault case, one that involved a Justin Manning.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Stynes said. “I know it might be a long shot you would remember anything, but I wanted to try.”
“I’ve got the file and my notes here.” Helton hummed to himself while he apparently looked at the file. “I do remember this. Kind of.”
“What happened?” Stynes asked.
“Standard stuff. Manning got into it with some guy. There was pushing and shoving. I guess your boy Manning took a swing at the other dude and clocked him in the jaw. Guy wasn’t really hurt, but he wanted to press charges. Misdemeanor assault. Manning didn’t have a record, so he walked with a fine. Except he never bothered to pay the fine, so the warrant was issued. Happens every day in the big city. Why are you interested? What did Manning do?”
“Let’s call it identity theft.”
“Well, I can send you a copy of this report if you’d like.”
“Thanks. That would be great.”
There was a long pause. Stynes thought the connection had been lost. He was about to ask when Helton spoke again.
“Shit,” Helton said.
“What?”
“This name. Manning. And Dove Point. I read about this.” Another pause. “Shit. This guy’s pretending to be…”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Trying? Isn’t it obvious he isn’t the kid? He stole a dead kid’s identity.”
“That would be my guess, too. But we have to make sure.”
“I’m going to look at that story again.” Helton made the humming noise again. “Yeah, I have in my notes that Manning seemed like an odd duck. He had that twenty-mile stare, you know? But that’s half the perps we deal with here.”
Perps? Stynes thought. Did people really talk that way?
“If you could just send it on over.”
“You got it,” Helton said. “And I guess an identity theft case is a nice break from prosecuting cow tippers?”
“Right,” Stynes said. He hung up, then added, “Asshole.”